I stuck both cellphones in my jacket pocket. “Why two sets of keys?”
“The one with the company logo is for the rent car. The other set is my personal keys.”
I put the rental’s keyfob in my jacket pocket and tossed the personal keys to the ground before the kneeling man. I pulled the money and driver’s license from his wallet and tossed the wallet near the keys. “Do what I say and you can live to use those keys and credit cards again.” I pocketed the money and turned to the left to read the driver’s license in the fading light. “Arthur Caprese?”
He stared at me and said nothing.
I smacked him on the side of the head with my gun barrel hard enough to get his attention. “Are you the Arthur Caprese whose picture is on this license I removed from the wallet I found in your pocket? It’s not a hard question.” Once a prisoner says something, anything, it’s easier to get them to keep talking. I raised the gun barrel again.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“That’s better. I see you’re from Chicago. Hey, Snoop, another goombah from Chicago.” I pocketed the license and stuck the Glock under his chin. “You work for Wolenski?”
Caprese lifted his chin as high as he could. “Don’t know nobody by that name.”
I slapped him with my left hand. “We do this easy, or we do this hard. It’s up to you, pal. Do you work for Wolenski?”
He shook his head.
“So who do you work for if not Wolenski?”
“I don’t work for nobody.”
I made sure Snoop had a gun trained on Caprese. I holstered the Glock then slapped him three times, left-right-left. Sometimes humiliation works where brute force won’t. “You’re too dumb to work for yourself, Caprese. Let me show you something.” I grabbed one of the dead men and dragged his body to the base of the nearest sand hill, a dozen feet away. I frisked the body, removed his wallet, two cellphones same as Caprese, keys, and an ankle-holster with a Browning.380 in it. I dropped the ankle-holster with the pistol to one side. I extracted the driver’s license and money and tossed the wallet and keys onto the body. “He won’t need those anymore.” I stuck the license and money in my pants pocket. I put the cellphones in my jacket pocket. “Why did he carry two cellphones?”
Caprese glared at me.
I shrugged and grabbed the next body beside the fallen AK-47 and dragged it over by the first. I found the dead man’s wallet, two cellphones, and car keys. I dropped the cellphones in my jacket pocket where they clunked against the other four. The pocket was getting heavy. I put the money in my pants along with the driver’s license. I tossed the wallet and car keys onto the body.
I dragged the last man and stacked his body on the other two, removing another wallet, two more cellphones, and a pistol from a shoulder holster. “No car keys for him?” I tossed the pistol near the other one. I would retrieve them later.
Caprese spit on the ground.
“Oh, I get it,” I said, “He caught a ride to the airport with you. Huh, goombah?” Same drill with the money, cellphones, and driver license. I had quite a collection going. “Watch this, Caprese.” I drew my weapon again to cover him and nodded to Snoop. “You know what to do.”
Snoop disappeared. A few seconds later a car engine started. Snoop drove a Jeep into view and paused at the base of the hill near the three bodies. He put the Jeep into four-wheel drive and climbed a few feet up the hill. Clumps of sand held together with the sparse grass and vines cascaded down the slope from the front wheels, crowding toward the three bodies.
I watched as Snoop climbed the Jeep farther up the slope. When the sandy avalanche began to cover the feet of the nearest body, I motioned him to stop. “Caprese, if my friend drives farther up that hill—say, to the top and down the other side—the sand will push down and bury your three friends in an unmarked grave. Did any of them have families?”
He stared at the three bodies.
“You may as well tell me, Caprese. I’ll get the information from their cellphones and driver’s licenses. Everything’s on the internet these days.”
“Deuce and Al have wives and kids. Yank has a fiancée—had a fiancée.”
“That’s better. You know, Caprese, if I drag your dead body over there and pitch it on top of theirs, the sand will bury you too. There will be no evidence that any of you ever lived. None of you will have a funeral. Your families will have no graves to visit. They won’t know what happened to you because your bodies will never be found out here. Not ever. This phosphate mine has been abandoned for years. I’ll roll your rent car into that old retention pond over there. It’s thirty feet deep. Did you know that? The car will never be found either. It will be like the four of you never existed.”
Caprese swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead, barely visible in the dim light. I didn’t think it was from the heat. He collapsed back on his heels and bent at the waist. His shoulders shook.
“Now I’m going to count to three. At three, I’ll put a bullet in your ear unless you start to talk. One… Two…”
“Wolenski.”
“I can’t hear you, Caprese.”
He raised his head. “We work for Wolenski.”
“Why have you been following me?”
“Hey, my knees is killing me, man. Can I, like, stand up or something?”
“Sit cross-legged. Put both hands on the ground behind you and lean back on them.”
He dropped his hands to the ground in front of him and rocked on his hands and knees. But instead of rolling over to his backside, he lunged sideways towards the AK-47 lying ten feet away.
I shot him in the knee. “Don’t make me kill you.”
He kept moving, grabbed the Kalashnikov in both hands and rolled over, swinging the barrel toward me. My first bullet ricocheted off the Kalashnikov, sending sparks into the twilight like fireworks and spoiling his aim. The second bullet hit the ground beside him, kicking up a geyser of sand. The third bullet hit him in the shoulder. It was the shoulder shot that made him miss me. The fourth bullet ripped into his stomach. A gut shot makes the body relax reflexively. The AK-47 br-a-a-apped out a burst of automatic gunfire into the air as it fell from his limp fingers. I kicked it out of reach.
He grabbed his midsection with both hands. Blood bubbled from his lips.
I grabbed my phone to call 9-1-1. I tapped in the number then saw there was no signal in the Everglades. I knelt beside the fallen man. “Why, Caprese, why? A few years in prison is better than dying. Why?”
“You was gonna kill me anyways.”
“No, I intended to turn you over to the Port City police. Now I can’t even call an ambulance.”
“It don’t matter none, McCrary. Yeah, I know who you are. It don’t matter none, ’cause I’m gut shot.” He grimaced and groaned. “Finish it, McCrary.”
“I can’t,” I answered.
“McCrary, I’m a dead man. I’m in a lot of pain, dude. Finish it, for crissakes.”
“I can’t do that, Arthur.”
Snoop had backed the Jeep off the hill when Caprese started talking. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Chuck, you go search the Ford. I’ll stay with Arthur.”
I stood and walked to the rental car. As I slid into the passenger seat, a gunshot shattered the silence of the Everglades. I looked over at Snoop, holstering his weapon. He looked back with tears in his eyes. “Had to be done, Chuck. It was the humane thing to do.”
Chapter 50
I pulled a folded sheet of paper from the glove compartment. It was a printed email sent Tuesday, March 28 at 9:04 a.m. to an email address that started with deuce followed by five digits @gmail.com. The sender’s address was a jumble of letters and numbers, also @gmail.com, obviously an account set up for one-time use. The email had a good quality portrait of Michelle from her Facebook page, along with her name, home address, and Ponder’s address, with the notation Boyfriend. “Look at this, Snoop. It was sent the next morning after the bombing. Whoever sent this knew of Michelle’s involvement and
knew she was in a relationship with Whiskers. Obviously these four guys were working with the three stooges.”
Snoop peered at the photo. “That’s fast action. One of the other three perps sent it, or talked to someone else who sent it to the three stooges.”
“Then the stooges gave it to these four. Wallace may be a bomb-thrower, but he has no connection in Chicago that I know of and probably no mob connections either. More likely the tip on Michelle came from Shamanski. If her father is an attorney, it’s likely that he knows someone like Wolenski who could put a bunch of killers on an airplane on short notice.”
I pocketed the email and pulled another set of two folded pages from the glove compartment. “Here’s another email to this deuce address from a different random address sent Thursday, March 30 at 9:32 a.m. This one added my name and office address above Michelle’s picture on the first page.” I handed the sheet to Snoop.
“They added you to the hit list. But why no picture?”
“I’m not on Facebook and there’s no picture of me on the McCrary Investigations website,” I said. “All the sender had was my name and office address. They must have tailed me from my office Friday morning. I’m slipping. I didn’t make them until three hours later.”
“Is this the spot where I say ‘I told you so’?” asked Snoop.
“This is that exact spot.”
“Okay, I told you so. They were trying to hit you.”
“Before you get too smug, Oh Great Detective, look at this second sheet where they added James Ponder as a target. And look at the handwritten note at the bottom.”
Snoop took the email. “That’s my license plate number and home address.” He held the sheet closer to the dome light. “They’re written in different pens. The three stooges must have seen my license plate when I blocked them in on South River Drive. They got my home address from the license plate and added it. That’s why they followed me to Mango Island this morning. I must be slipping too.”
Chapter 51
I drove ten minutes before I had a cell signal. I pulled onto the shoulder and found the GPS tracker that Caprese or one of his dead friends had stuck under my rear bumper. I called Kelly. “I’d like to report that four men tried to kill me earlier, right about sunset.”
“You in the hospital?”
“No, I’m parked on the shoulder of County Road 888a. This is me, good citizen that I am, calling the cops to report a crime.”
“Obviously, they didn’t succeed.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to report four dead bodies too.”
“Where?”
“The old phosphate mine at the end of 888a.”
“Who are they?”
“The shooters.” I read from the driver’s licenses. “Arthur Caprese, Lawrence R. Lambert, Jr., Alberto A. Echeverria, and William J. Yankelowicz.”
“You realize that I got off duty at seven p.m., right? It’s… ten now. You ruined my afternoon. You gonna ruin my evening too?”
I stuck the licenses in my shirt pocket. “You don’t seem concerned for my welfare, Kelly.”
“I know you too well, Chuck. Did you kill four of them yourself, or was Snoop with you?”
“Snoop was with me. I sent him home; he’s had a rough day.”
Kelly sighed. “Okay. Meet Bigs and me at the crime scene.”
“I have an early appointment tomorrow. How about I meet you where I-795 ends and becomes Florida 888. You know that Denny’s on the north side of the street?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be there eating dinner.”
Kelly slid into the booth beside me. Bigs filled a whole bench by himself.
The server came over with an order pad. “Y’all want a menu?”
Kelly looked up at her. “Just coffee. It’s gonna be a long night. How about you, Bigs?”
“Three-egg western omelet, grits, and coffee.”
When the server left, Kelly turned to me. “What you got?”
“Here are the dead men’s licenses.” I fished them from my shirt pocket. “And here are the keys to their rented Ford. Snoop and I locked the guns and their other personal effects like wallets and cellphones in the trunk.”
She handed the licenses and keyfob to Bigs. “When can we get statements from you and Snoop?”
“How about tomorrow morning late, after you’ve run the call logs from the phones? Each man carried a flip phone and a smartphone. We’ll meet you at the North Shore Precinct.”
The server set two cups of coffee on the table. “I’ll be right back with your omelet, officer. You want a refill, Chuck?”
“I’m good, Ruby.”
Kelly slurped her coffee, set it down with a bang. “Where are the guns you and Snoop used?”
“They’re in my car. I didn’t want to bring them in here. Might freak somebody out.”
Chapter 52
Every office developer who adds another glass tower to the Port City skyline thinks they need to build the new one taller than the last one. Tank Tyler had moved into the newest and tallest marble monument early in January. I hadn’t had occasion to see him since then and I was looking forward to seeing both his new offices and the new building.
My ears popped as the high-speed elevator rushed to the sixty-first floor in less than a minute. Tank’s offices had double mahogany entrance doors at the end of the hall. Impressive. A discreet brass plaque on the left door said Thomas Tyler Asset Management LLC. The right door had a similar plaque announcing Investments/Estate Planning/Tax Planning.
A soft musical chime rang when I opened the door. I spent the first few seconds rubber-necking at Tank’s reception room. Mahogany paneling matched the reception desk. Silver Berber carpet, Knoll chairs, glass-topped coffee table and original artwork on the walls.
He opened the mahogany door behind the reception desk. “Susan doesn’t come in until eight. That’s why I turned the chime on.” We shook hands.
I gestured at the reception area. “On the weekends, do you remove the furniture and play Jai Alai in here?”
He smiled. “Aw, it’s not that big, not quite. C’mon, I can’t wait to show you the new kitchen.” He led the way down a mahogany paneled hallway.
“Are there any mahogany trees left in Madagascar or wherever?”
He grinned and his teeth gleamed in his chocolate-colored face. “Honduras. You like it?”
“Between the silver padded carpet and the wooden walls all around, I feel like I’m in the world’s largest coffin.”
“Ha. That’s a good one. Here we are.” He opened a door on the right and led me into the kitchen. “First class all the way. That’s a Sub-Zero three-door refrigerator freezer. Restaurant size ice-maker over there. Dishwasher here. A Gaggenau oven and range, not just a microwave and a toaster-oven like the old place. And a professional coffee maker and espresso machine.” He spread his arms wide and bowed. “Ta-da.”
“And mahogany cabinets, I see.”
“What can I say, Chuck? My decorator likes mahogany. Whaddya think?”
“It looks like the kind of kitchen that Rachel Ray would buy if she had the money.”
“Let me pour you a coffee in one of my new gold-trimmed China mugs.” He opened a cabinet and pulled out a bone China mug with the TT logo on it. He stuck it under the spigot and pushed a button. The machine hissed to life and shot precisely the right amount of steaming coffee into the mug. He handed it to me and moved toward the door.
“Aren’t you having any?”
“I’ve been here for an hour. My cup’s on my desk. Doctor it up anyway you like. Half-and-half’s in the fridge.”
I added a little half-and-half. “Tank, how much of this machinery do you know how to operate, really?”
He grinned. “The coffee machine is the only thing I use, but some of my people use this stuff to make cappuccinos and lattes, crap like that. It’s a fringe benefit for them. Come on, let me show you my office.”
Tank was once a defensive end for the Port City Pelica
ns. Even so, the big guy fairly skipped down the hall to another set of double doors that opened into his office. His playing weight had been 330 pounds. You can carry that much weight when you’re six-foot-six and anchor the right end of the Bigs Brigade, which is what the sportswriters called the Pelicans front four when Tank and Bigs Bigelow and two other defensive linemen had dominated the AFC. Tank dropped the better part of a hundred pounds when he retired from the Pelicans and started his CPA and money management firm, but he was still a giant of a man in more ways than one.
He stepped to one side as he entered his office, letting me take in the full effect of the two window walls that overlooked Seeti Bay. The rising sun glared through the windows.
“On a clear day, can you see Bimini?” I asked.
“Not quite, the horizon’s thirty miles away. Oh, you were joking.”
The opposite wall—mahogany, of course—featured his CPA certificate, a Masters degree from the University of Atlantic County, a photo of the UAC Falcons national championship team from a few years earlier with Tank on the back row, and an autographed photo of the Bigs Brigade posing with the AFC Championship trophy the Pelicans won the year before he retired. They had lost the Super Bowl in overtime.
I flopped down in one of four matching client chairs. “You’ve come a long way from Alabama, Tank.”
He pushed a button beside the window and a sun shade whirred down. “It’s way too bright until about ten o’clock, but I wanted you to see the great view.” He sat down behind an L-shaped mahogany desk that was six feet on the base and nine feet on the long side where I sat. “I have a full appointment book ahead of me, pal. You said you needed advice on something important. Whaddya need?”
I put my briefcase on the next chair and pulled out three of the photographs I’d printed from Steven Wallace’s files the previous Sunday. I handed them over.
Dangerous Friends (A Carlos McCrary novel Book 4) Page 20